I posted this on the wine part of the forum but figured I'd put it in here too and maybe more folks would see it and put in a reply? A wine beer? sure why not and I can trade beer for grape juice where I live. I drive by Alexandria Nicole where DFH sourced the juice once a month and thought it would be cool to try making this.

So... can someone better and more knowledgeable than me chime in and help me out? (man I'm glad SWMBO does not read these things)

I'm playing around trying to come up with a workable hybrid beer/wine recipe based a little loosely on DFH's Noble Rot. Below is the recipe from BeerSmith that I worked on a bit (just noticed the efficiencies look screwy I get 70-75%typically). Anyway.. I watched the videos on Noble Rot and some of the reviews. Based on that, I came up with the recipe below (except I swapped out the Warrior, Willamette, and Liberty Hops that DFH used with Sorachi, Citra, and Sterling in an attempt to go after citrus and spice - which quite possibly will get overpowered by the grapes anyway but what the heck - I'll try a few versions of this)

Anyway right now, I'm guessing that 22 Brix is about the range of the "typical" sugar percentage in Viognier, Pinot Gris, and Muscat - does that sound right? I'm trying to fine tune my recipe in beersmith and figure out how much of a given juice I'll have to add to the wort to get me where I need to be for the fermentables. My plan is to add the juice during flameout/whirlpool so I don't concentrate it but I still kill off things in there. I'm know the Brix varies on season, botrytis, etc. but does 22 seem like a good rough number to start planning with? I've tried some searches but nothing is jumping out at me.

Like DFH, I'm shooting for 50% of my fermentables from the grains (German Pilsner and some White Wheat) and 50% from the juice (Viognier with probably a Pinot or maybe a Muscat variety - still debating)) The Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast that I was thinking of using says it tolerates up to 12% alcohol and attenuation is 77-83%. The DFH videos say Noble Rot is 9% and I've seen some draft reviews of it saying it was actually 8.3% IBU is supposed to be 35.

Oh, any thoughts on whether I have to treat this hybrid wine/beer like I would a Cider and avoid surface contact with oxygen (e.g. I fill the Carboys "all the way up" for fermentation)?)

Right now the biggest issue I'd like to figure out is the fermentables that I'll get from adding the unfermented grape juice. I can measure the Brix with a refractometer and that will give me a rough percentage by weight but I'm just not sure I have a handle on this. So.. in the recipe below I'm using what I believe is the approximate sugar from 2 gallons of juice at 22 Brix and inputing it in beersmith as Sucrose (which is probably the completely wrong way to do this) So, basically I'm thinking I make a batch using the ingredients below so that post-boil I'm at 4 gallons of wort, then I add 2 gallons of must at flameout, cool the batch and ferment. Thoughts?

(I'll make a big starter too, and the amount of liquid oak extract still needs to be worked out based on what I use but it will be a Vanilla type of liquid oak)

Botrytis is predominately used to make sauterne dessert wine in France. They harvest around 30 brix when making sauterne so 22 brix is most likely a low estimate for the juice you want to be sourcing. Put together a decent saison recipe targeting 8-9 abv. Next figure out a conversion of brix to specific gravity or degrees Plato depending on what you normally use when you brew. I'd estimate that your juice would be in the range of 25-27 brix. You could also just take a gravity reading of the juice to see before your brew day. Lastly do a mixture problem of a given volume of juice at x specific gravity blended with another volume of wort at x original gravity to yield a target original gravity for your blended juice and wort. I'd mash higher to mitigate the possibility of a really thin finished beer because white grape juice fermented "to dryness" meaning fully attenuated will have a thin mouthfeel. Adjust your wort and juice volumes before the brew day to figure out the required volumes of each tO target your desired ABV. Shouldnt be too difficult with some decent algebra background. Maybe add a little lemon zest at flameout to offset the residual sweetness of the must. If you brew it respond back with results.
Brian